


Dragnet

by thewrathofbombast



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Death, Drama, Eventual Romance, F/M, Literature, Poetry, semi-canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-02-03 11:44:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12747651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewrathofbombast/pseuds/thewrathofbombast
Summary: Where happiness is manufactured and accidents prevented, two worlds collide irrevocably.





	1. The Underground

 

The messenger came swiftly but the words were hushed.

The MWPSB was onto them, and they had to move fast if they didn’t want to be caught. Reticent as the MWPSB was, it was known in the net that their weapons could execute people on the spot. The username Pariah51817 came to mind, an ex-detective whose blog surfaced in an anonymous message board. Many claimed it was a work of fiction by some loser wanting to have a go at conspiracy theory junkies, but her mind held onto whatever sliver of information she could use to their advantage. Fiction or not, this was not a situation to take chances in.

She took out the route map of the underground tunnels, conduits and pipelines, ruins of an extinct city; the city that existed before Sibyl.

“Light.”

An agile hand clinked open a lighter and held it to illuminate the faded paper.

“We’ll go down the South line, run across the railings of the old metro station. There’s three tunnels; make sure to take the one on the far left. Follow the blue phosphorescent marks on the floor. We’ll lose them there.” Akane ordered, tracing the route with her finger on the rudimentary blueprint.

“It’s been raining heavily and you may not be able to see where you are stepping. Be careful,” Ryota warned everyone, tattooed hand pulling up his black balaclava as he got up.  

There’s still time, she thought, hastily returning the blueprints to the bag around her waist. There’s still a chance. But when a blue-green laser light illuminated her face, she knew they were doomed.

“Shit! They’re here! Run!” Ryota yelled.

The group poised to run in the devised line formation as a male voice boomed over them.

“Freeze! This is the MWPSB!”

From his vantage point dark silhouettes could be dimly seen, delineated by the faint light of the city many levels above the deep underground, quickly jumping over pipes and rails. They were unexpectedly quiet and organized, considering they were getting ambushed. Hungry and ready to pounce on their worthy prey, enforcers rushed past the inspector, eyes gleaming with the turquoise from their dominators.

“Sorry to interrupt your afterschool special!” Enforcer Sasayama smirked as he scanned the darkness for a target to train his aim on. Once found, he proceeded to pull the trigger remorselessly. The others followed suit.

Akane kept herself at the rear of the group, small as she was, to shield at least some of her comrades with her healthy Psycho-Pass or, conversely, distract the enforcers with the death stare of the Samurai face printed on the back of her jacket. As it was, Sibyl kept deeming her invisible, or at the very least, inoffensive.

“Sho, get in front of me!” she yelled at the man running beside her.

Whatever talents the quiet, young genius hacker Sho had for deciphering impenetrable codes and breaching security hurdles, they didn’t reflect on his athletic ability. Akane knew; he was under her wing after all. She’d shown him the ropes; she’d brought him into the group. He trusted her.

A muted metallic sound shot off and a small gasp of air escaped him. She saw him fall and in a moment of confusion thought he had tripped, halting her frantic run to help him. Grabbing his arm, she attempted to pull him up, but Sho remained motionless and unresponsive, his red hair mingling in the dirty puddles. A very known dread began corroding her like an alarm, trilling louder and louder.

“Sho! Get up! Get up, dammit!” she shrieked, her enraged tone quickly souring into a desperate plea. With a burst of strength, she was able to turn him over, ready to check his pulse, but it was too late: she had been found.  

“I suggest you stop right there,” the male officer from before said.

Akane stiffened but turned her head sharply to acknowledge the tall figure standing behind and above her; his face obscured by the lights of drones on the platform. She stood up, slowly turning her body to face him. Almost as a reflex, her eyes went to the dominator hanging from his hand. An unresolved rage began to possess her, countenance turning from grief to an irate grimace. In a sudden, impulsive move, she took a quick step forward to charge against him with all her strength, before taking off in the opposite direction from that of her group.

“Shit!” Kogami muttered after stumbling in the puddle behind him. He wasn’t in the mood for these types of antics. 

“Gino! Keep an eye on Sasayama!” he called over his shoulder as he raced after the small woman.

He saw her skedaddle over rails, flinging her arms to keep her balance before disappearing into the dark toothless mouth of a tunnel. He quickly approached before pausing at the ominous entrance: a colossal, unadulterated ring of gloom received him. The echo of her boots squelching in the water reached him from within the tunnel, until silence filled the air again. He cautiously began walking down the tunnel, pointing his weapon forward.

Pressed against the wall next to the other end of the tunnel, trying to control her panting, Akane closed her eyes to try to hear better. The loud rumble of the water running underneath the rusty scaffolding she was standing on made it hard to discern any sounds coming from the tunnel. She carefully angled her body to peek inside it.

Yes, he was there and closer than she thought.

Sorting her alternatives, her eyes scanned the possible escape routes or hideouts in this area of the underground: the area she hadn’t mapped out yet. She peeked over the railing. The stairs zig-zagged down to a concrete passageway along the canal. Problem was, the canal below was close to overflowing from weeks of heavy rain. She had to be very quick.

He heard the sound of her boots again, this time clanking fast against metallic steps. He rushed to the exit, no more games. His stomach hit the railing at the end of the tunnel as he briskly pointed his dominator at the emptiness below, but he couldn’t catch a glimpse of her on his sights. He tried to point it through the cracks on the metal floor, but with a moving target it was impossible. He muttered a curse and raced down the set of stairs on flying leaps.

Only a few seconds, just those precious seconds of distance was what she needed to lose him. She couldn’t look up or stop when her feet finally touched the wet floor. As she was pivoting to run, he jumped from above and landed exactly before her, blocking her escape route. Her bright eyes widened with surprise at being cornered. She instinctively took a few steps backwards when he pointed his dominator at her, his next words decisively anchoring her to the floor.

“Run again and I’ll shoot you.” His voice was gruff and his intent resolved. But the directive voice of his weapon seemed to disagree:

Tsunemori, Akane.  
Age: 22  
Crime Coefficient: 28  
Not a target for enforcement action.

Furrowed eyebrows and puzzled eyes met the glare directed at him as he lowered his weapon to try and physically apprehend her. A dazzling light blinded him for a second before he realized she was lunging towards him. He gasped when a strong back kick to his hand relinquished his hold on the dominator and sent it straight into the current of the canal, lost forever. For a second, they both stupidly watched as its light sank in the hazy water. Seemingly shocked at the outcome, they now turned to look at each other. Her eyes turned into slits of disdain.

“Not sorry,” she spat markedly before turning around and sprinting down the passageway.

In a second he debated if he should insist on this pointless chase, but anger pushed his feet, now soaking wet, forward.

“Aren’t you going to leave me alone?” she shouted as she climbed on the rungs of a ladder leading up to a tunnel.

“You surely don’t expect me to let you go after you attacked me and destroyed my dominator, do you?” he argued back, quickly closing in on her. She merely scoffed, focused now on making it to the tunnel above before he could grab her.

Breathless from the effort and out of time, she crawled on the squalor of the tunnel before swiftly lying on her back, bending her knees and inching close to the edge, waiting.

As soon as she saw the spikes of his hair, she kicked hard, trying to connect with his nose but he foresaw her move; head dodging and hand blocking her leg. He grasped her ankle then, hard, and slammed it onto the floor, twisting it. She tried to shrimp out, but he was already mounting his leg on her thigh and then the other one. His hands grabbed her wrists, pinning her to the floor as she writhed in pain.   

“Will you stop now?” His blue-gray furious eyes pierced her.

She stubbornly surrendered, letting her limbs lay flat; body admitting defeat and depleted of all its stamina. As he got off her, his face left her field of vision to be replaced with a darkened ceiling. She sat up, clenching her jaw in anger.

“Is he dead?” she asked without facing him, shoulders hunched, her fist over her heart.

He had stood up and was busy grumbling at his terminal, raising his arms in hope of finding a signal, visibly disgruntled.

“What?”

“Did you kill him?”

His gaze flicked at her and back at his terminal.

“The redhead? No. You would know if he was dead. He was merely paralyzed.”

She let out a slow breath of relief.

She stood up but, upon taking a step, a sharp pain made her recoil. She limped a little but lost balance and would have hit the floor hard hadn’t he grabbed the collar of her jacket, ripping it as he pulled her up.

“What are you doing?!” She raged and twisted, hanging from his hand as though she were a cat. When she found her feet again, she scowled and violently pushed his hand away. “Don’t touch me!”

He had already lost all patience with this girl’s insolence.

“Come here” he grunted, wrenching her sleeve towards him while reaching inside of his jacket to fetch handcuffs. She let him restrain her, face turned away in fury. Deliberately staring at her, he thought _who gets more upset about a jacket than about a twisted ankle?_ But he quickly gave up on trying to understand her unfathomable behavior.

“Now we walk.” He tugged at the handcuffs with his finger and she reluctantly complied, following him with a slight limp.

“Do you even know where you are going?” she asked, wincing at each step.

“To wherever we can find a signal for my terminal.”

“These tunnels are very old and have been abandoned for a long time. You won’t find any signal close by here. It’s a dead zone,” she spat, her tone matter-of-fact. “We’d have to go back to where we came from to find some type of relay service”.

“And how do you suppose we go back? Should we enjoy a nice swim in the waters below?”.

“Fine.” _Why am I trying to reason with a cop?_ “Here, at least take my flashlight so we can see where we are going”. She shifted her hip upwards where the small flashlight hung from her belt hoop. In a huff, he unhooked it and turned it on.

“Perfect. This tunnel seems to be going downwards”

“It looks like it’s a partially immersed tunnel,” she said, deadpan, her eyes inspecting the rusty joints. “With any luck, there won’t be any water at the bottom, though judging by how deteriorated it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were.”

He watched the serious expression on her face.

“How do you know so much about these tunnels?” he inquired with a hint of sincere curiosity that she quickly took as condescension.

Her eyes drifted up, following the trail of rust before they fell on his, unyielding. “I’m not ready to share my secrets with a cop, mind you.”

They resumed their pace when he interjected: “You’ll have to reveal your secrets when we interrogate you, however.”

“Mmm, I see. An optimist. You actually think you’ll make it out of here.” She said in the same dull tone, eyes fixed on the void in front of them.

“You seem pretty confident, despite the situation you are in.” Kogami looked intently at her limping foot to stress his point.

“I’m only saying that these tunnels belong to a part of the underground that has not been mapped out yet; they could go anywhere.” She stopped herself. “And as it stands, this is also _your_ current situation. You wouldn’t be the first inspector that gets lost in the underground maze either, you should know,” she added sharply, cracks of anger beginning to show through her mask of indifference.  

“So that’s the job you do for the underground groups. You map their routes. Makes sense.”

 She looked away and said no more.

_

 

They kept walking in silence for what seemed to be an eternity. His perception of time distorted now by the unforgiving darkness surrounding them. She seemed unperturbed by his mounting impatience, however, and that annoyed him even more.

“Is this goddamned tunnel taking us to the center of the Earth?”

“Yes, we are going straight to hell.” She scoffed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Isn’t this whole situation funny?” she said, sardonically. “Here I am, limping, attached to nothing less than a brooding cop, treading down an endless tunnel. It’s a dream come true.”

He rolled his eyes, but was ready to try a truce.

“How’s the ankle anyway? Let me see it. Sit over here.”

She didn’t know why but she obeyed him. He held her arm while she sat on the side of the tunnel and gave her the flashlight to hold. He kneeled and put her foot on his lap.  Deft fingers untied the laces, but when he had to pull the boot out, he did it slowly to assuage the pain. Still, she groaned.

“It’s pretty swollen.” He held her foot gently, turning it slowly to examine her injury. His fingers lightly touched the flourishing bruise and she drew back her leg in pain.

“Don’t touch it, please.” Her cuffed hands went up and her gaze pleaded with his. He turned his head to look at the darkness of the tunnel and back at her.

“Listen, I don’t know how much time we have. I could carry you for part of the way, but it would be better if you could walk a bit too. Now, I can fix this,” he said earnestly, hoping to appeal to her reason and by some lucky chance make her trust him, “and… although it _will_ hurt, it’ll be a quick hurt and you won’t be making your injury any worse.”

She pursed her lips in frustration and resentment at him: the cause of everything, after all. But given her limited range of choices, she took a deep breath and mumbled a word of agreement.

“Turn off the light,” Kogami said in a quiet voice.

She did as he instructed but still closed her eyes. She felt cold fingers gently slide under the hem of her tight pants and readied herself for the pain. His thumbs massaged lightly the skin above her ankle, carefully avoiding the swollen area.

“So, where are you from? I’m from Kanagawa.”

“Huh? Do you really think this is the ti—AHHHHH!” Her scream reverberated on the walls of the tunnel. He was right; it hurt, but to her surprise, the pain dissipated quickly. She turned the flashlight back on just so he could see her disbelief. That was a slick trick he pulled.

He smirked at her.

“Turn your ankle. Does it still hurt?” Kogami asked, his pragmatic tone reminding her of who and where they were.  

She moved her small foot around.

“Barely.”

“Okay, let’s hurry then.”

-

Neither knew how much longer they’d have to walk, and though their pace had picked up, it felt like long moments passed before she spotted a glimmer of light at the bottom of the tunnel.

“That should be where the flat part of the tunnel starts. We’re almost at the middle of it,” Akane said.

Her heart sank when, upon approaching, water lapped at her feet. Their only viable exit was almost fully inundated, water close to reaching the ceiling. How could she have miscalculated it?  

“Any idea how long this part of the tunnel is?” He pressed his terminal watch against her handcuffs to release her.

“I’m guessing 15, 20 meters at least.” Akane replied in a mousy tone, rubbing her wrists. He thought he saw her pupils shake nervously, as if she knew more than she was willing to admit, even to herself.  

“Looks like we’ll have to swim after all.” He wanted to reassure her, noticing her body tensing. “At least there’s light inside this part of the tunnel; that’ll make the passage a lot easier. Come on.” He nodded to his right and extended his hand as he stepped in the water.

Akane tried to explain her trepidation.

“Uh, I don’t…” She looked him in the eye. “I don’t know how to swim,” she confided with as much dignity as she could muster.

“Oh.” His hand remained extended. “Then I’ll have to carry you. This is the only exit. Come.” His tone was firm.

He took a hold of her hand as he led her into the cold, turbid water. A quick glimpse inside revealed that there was barely any breathing room. Now, waist deep, a repulsive musty smell rose to her nose. Without her meaning to, her body started shaking. Kogami grabbed her by the shoulders and gently turned her body, his chest bumping against her back. The rumble of his voice made her shiver worse.

“Relax. I won’t let you go. But I also don’t want you to have a claustrophobic attack in there, okay?” He wrapped his arm diagonally over her chest, moving forward to drag her into the water like a dead weight. As nervous as she was, she hated abdicating her self-reliance to someone else, stranger or not.

She gasped and tightened her grip on his arm when she lost her foothold, instinctively kicking her legs as he started swimming.

“Are you all right? Just do your best to keep your head up, okay?”

“Y-yes.”

She could hear his strained breathing as they started gliding through fluctuating turns of darkness and light; her eyes fixed on the ceiling and her mind attempting in vain to measure the meters they had traversed. She willed herself to not think about the depth of the tunnel—or her being swallowed by it—digging her nails into his jacket.

Even with the cold water gnawing at his body, his mind and eyes kept calm, seeking for a sign of an exit. With a gush of energy on his endeavor, his leg lightly brushed against her and she panicked, arms slapping the water around them. Her scream was muted when bubbles came out of her mouth and then, by some miracle, her face rose and she could breathe again.

“Hey, relax! _Relax_! I got you.” He tightened his hold on her as she coughed and shook in fear. “We’re almost there!”

It wasn’t a lie. He had finally caught a glimpse of the sign he was waiting for. Stretching his arm to grasp onto the edge of the exit, he pulled forward to get them out of the tunnel. Feet finding purchase, he held her shaking body close to his chest until she was able to stand. After stumbling a little to get away from the water, she dropped to the floor, exhausted but relieved. He sat beside her, panting and sodden, an arm on his knee as he tossed his wet hair out of his face.

Akane looked up. They were in an enormous, cylindrical room. A remnant of some sort of filtering system from the past. Still, it was nothing compared to the storm sewer systems that existed today.

“Sometimes I think this whole city is hollow underneath.” She mused to herself before focusing back on him.

“You had me worried in there.” Kogami said, shaking his arms in disgust at the water, his face wet. “Perhaps don’t run into tunnels when it’s been raining for weeks if you don’t know how to swim?”

She watched him.

“Thank you.” She said meekly. She meant it.

_

Once they had climbed the long metal ladder out and trod through many a corridor and passage, they arrived at an open space full of massive columns, dimly illuminated by some flickering lights above. Her pale face darted vivaciously looking around the floor, seeking the marks she had left behind.

“I know where we are!” Akane shouted upon finding them. The picture she had come to memorize suddenly materializing in front of her. She scurried around the columns, interpreting the marks to determine which direction to take. He guardedly tried to follow her, fearing that she’d attempt to escape again. But all she did was circle around the columns, disappear from the sentinels of his eyes and reappear again and again, as if they were playing a peek-a-boo game.  

“Let’s head this way. There are a few exits, but the closest one will take us to Shimbashi.” She beckoned him to follow but he stayed put. She looked into his eyes and quickly understood the message they were sending her, prompting her to roll her own.

“Well, how do you plan on arresting me?” She crossed her arms and stared down at him. “You must’ve seen my Psycho-Pass number on your dominator, no? Wasn’t that the reason you didn’t shoot me?” She asked, irritated.

“I also saw you attack a detective and I know you aid a subversive group. What should I make of that?” His acute retort matching her severity.

“Well, luckily for you, it’s not about what you know, see or feel. It’s about what Sibyl decides. Isn’t your job to point the weapon and let Sibyl do the rest?”

“How do you do it? Do you take hue-clearing drugs? The illegal kind?” He reproached angrily too, taking a step forward, now towering over her.

Insulted at his impertinence, she looked defiantly into his eyes.

“Why don’t you ask your precious Sibyl and leave me the hell alone?” She muttered through her teeth.  

They stood still, staring daggers at each other when they heard steps echo behind the columns. They both turned to look.

A group of people appeared from the shadows behind the columns. It was the dark figures from before, spreading out and stalking around them like hungry beasts.

“It took you a while, didn’t it?” Akane said in a snappy tone.

“Well, my dear, few have as good a memory as you do and, if you recall, you took your maps with you.” A man, his mouth covered, countered in a nasty tone. “And is this a souvenir from your travels?” He looked up and down at Kogami, who was openly glowering at the feline gaze, unafraid.

“I’ll say. You do know how to pick’em,” the man jibed sarcastically.

“Be quiet, Taro.” Akane snapped, eternally impatient with pointless displays of grandiloquence.   

“Did he hurt you?” Another voice interrupted, loud and peevish. It was Ryota.

She eyed Kogami. “No.” She paused. “We can let him out through the East exit and be done with him.”

“Let him go, you said? Thanks to these pieces of shit we’ve lost three people.” Ryota said huskily, coming out of the shadows. He was a tall man in a big black jacket that failed to conceal the muscle underneath. His eyes blazed a fiery green—even with dilated pupils—bright against his tanned skin. “And I happen to be in the mood to break some teeth.”

Kogami was impassive, but he didn’t miss the sharp brass knuckle gleaming from his hand. Ryota came to stand behind Akane. She looked very small next to him.

“We won’t do that.” Akane stated sharply. Her arms were still crossed, but her face turned slightly over her shoulder to look at the heated man behind her.  

“Ak- You can’t be serious!” Taro complained, incredulous.

“There’s no benefit to us, save for the release of a misdirected anger and some doubtful, fleeting gratification. Consider the probable worsening of our hues and one more motive for the crackdowns to continue. Let’s keep our eyes on the ball.”

“You know me. I’m all for cheap, fleeting gratification. And also, how much worse can my hue get?” Ryota murmured, bending his arm upwards to show a balled fist.

“Is the dominator on him?” A tall woman leaning against the column inquired. Her eyes were lost in the shadow of her hood, but the vibrant red of her lips was conspicuous.

“No, he lost it. I told you. He’s useless. He’s just another one of Sibyl’s dogs; a waste without its eyes.” Akane put her hand over Ryota’s fist, bringing it back down. “Let’s go.”

The faceless woman spoke directly to Kogami, smiling. “You get to keep your handsome face tonight, Inspector.”

_

 

They walked surrounding Kogami until they reached a wide, illuminated tunnel; one of regular use. The whole group came to a halt as though a voice that he couldn’t hear had ordered them to. The others moved behind Akane.  

“Keep walking straight down this tunnel,” she said, adopting the same dry voice from before. “You’ll see a set of stairs on your left.” Kogami stared fixedly into her eyes as she spoke, but she couldn’t bear to hold his gaze. “You’ll find your exit there.”

He had nothing to say, so he turned around and started walking down the path she’d indicated. Once more, he tried to connect his terminal. It was alive. Before calling Ginoza he stopped to look back at her, but the whole group had already disappeared.  

____________________________

_[Firestarter by The Prodigy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmin5WkOuPw) _

_I'm the trouble starter, punkin' instigator_  
I'm the fear addicted, danger illustrated  
I'm a firestarter, twisted firestarter  
You're a firestarter, twisted firestarter.

 


	2. The Detective

An open book rested on his chest as the first rays of dawn filtered through the blinds, stealing him from the elusive and vacillating hours of sleep. He laid in absolute stillness—the hand over the book—dressed in tailored pants, a white shirt and a slightly loosened tie; a posture that to any outsider would resemble that of a dead man in his funerary and elegant tranquility.

But he did open his eyes, and dreams about cases, numbers and suspicions dissipated from his view and memory. Just as he had conquered (through relentless forbiddance against what he perceived to be his faults) the crags of rigorous discipline—that is, through a carefully designed routine that allotted brains and muscle the time and energy demanded, _needed_ —the trivial merited the same type of sharpness and obsessive precision. Setting the book aside, he stood and fixed the wrinkles on the covers of his bed. The bedroom’s décor was minimalistic: a bed, bare walls, an old sofa and a nightstand to hold books and cigarettes.

Like most mornings, he went to the kitchen to prepare himself a modest breakfast and ate while watching the MWPSB sanctioned news on a holographic screen.

 _So, they decided to keep the media in the dark about the case,_ he thought, when a commercial for hue-clearing vitamins interrupted his train of thought.

After putting the kitchen back to its tidy state, he headed for the other room in his apartment. As a detective, he had become aware early on of the paradoxical nature of his job; at once rigid and fluid, requiring a sharp memory and an ability to forget. He had wondered back then—when he was younger—if he’d ever be able to develop what Masaoka called a “detective’s intuition.” Not the habit to predict that hindered so many inspectors, but the ability to smell and to follow that smell.

The door opened to a smaller room with a desk and three tall bookcases replete with paper books. On the wall hung a large board with notes and drawings—spirals, waves, lines—over pictures, names, numbers, coordinates and maps. He sat at the desk where stacks of files stood in irregular towers. Other documents were placed carefully on the floor in a calculated arrangement, discernible only to him. When he managed to find free time or in his off days, he’d sit to read on a cushioned green seat nestled between the shelves: it was his favorite place in the apartment.

It was as though this room held what he rarely allowed himself out of it: the pangs and sparks of random inspiration, the license to be more visceral than rational for a while and, even at times, the short flashes of madness that came with lucidity. Doubtless, it was his discipline that kept that chimera controlled and his Psycho-Pass clean: he could dwell without letting his thoughts seize him and drag him down.

Many of the paper books he owned—most well-thumbed; the oldest failing to hold together—had come from his father and grandparents’ library. Even though he never met his father, he could piece the man together, the ghost of him, by sorting through his literary collection: the only legacy left of him. But most of his books had come through Sasayama and his connections (to whom or what, he didn’t care to know): random titles—both local and translated to Japanese—that told stories in more ways than words. There was the big fat dictionary with different dates scribbled on its end papers (the oldest one dating to 2015); the mystery novel that had pages chewed off by some animal and the love dedications written on poetry books with aging pages. What surprised him the most was the notion that there was still a market for such rarities, not only virtually obsolete, but the type that could cloud your hue.

Patiently, he began to study the files, his personal observations for the cases of the MWPSB. Soon after, it was time to shower and head to work.

 -

“We’re back where we started. The suspect says she was given hue-clearing drugs and sent to work at a factory for a measly salary. She’s an unregistered and latent criminal. There’s no lead as to who the seller is and there’s no match for the name she gave us.” Ginoza summarized in a humdrum tone, impatient with the delay of the closing in this case.

“Five days after she was taken into custody, the body of an unregistered man was found in a small textile factory in a different part of the city. The cause of death is still to be determined, but—” Kogami clicked a button and a picture of the holo projection of the body appeared on the screen, “the open sores found around his neck and his bloated extremities point to a reaction to a certain type of chemical ingested. We still haven’t determined if it’s an adverse reaction to the drug. As for the woman, it doesn’t make sense that if she was up to her ears in illegal hue-clearing drugs, her Psycho-Pass would suddenly cloud. There must be something we’re overlooking.”

“What you’re overlooking here is that the drugs she was given may have been counterfeit,” Sasayama muttered through his teeth, trying to lit up his cigarette.

“Sasayama! Didn’t I tell you not to smoke here?”

“Okay, okay, Gino-sensei! Calm down, will ya? Don’t want to kill your little cactus with those pitch-dark vibes of yours,” Sasayama replied, a little startled by the loud reprimand, putting out the cigarette.

“If the drugs are counterfeit, then how do you explain the fact that she worked undetected for a whole month? As soon as she’d come out of the abolition block the cymatic scanners would’ve detected her,” Kogami countered.

“There’s two possibilities: the sellers use a hook dose that’s effective temporarily, then replace the dose with a counterfeit. Or, second, the drugs have some sort of expiration date that renders them useless after a while.” Sasayama replied, with his usual overconfident satisfaction, smirking.

“But what’s the point of selling drugs that don’t work?” Kogami asked.

“That’s the question, Ko.” Sasayama said, smile wide now. “I’m sure from the business point of view there must be something to be gained.”

Kogami held his chin in his hand, deep in thought. _But it doesn’t make sense, even from the business point of view._

“Don’t think so hard, Inspector. Your Psycho-Pass may cloud,” Yayoi softly told Kogami. “Also, there’s still the matter of how these drugs are being transported undetected to different places in the city and if there are additional unauthorized people working elsewhere. And we don’t even have a sample of the drug to have Shion analyze it.”

“If people realize that unregistered or illegal aliens are working alongside them, it could cause a Psycho-hazard. Not to mention the fact that most of them may be latent criminals. Hordes of criminals could be walking the streets amongst healthy citizens.” Ginoza turned to look at the screen behind him. On it, there was the image of a woman in her forties, sitting in an interrogation room, still dressed in the factory uniform. Her hands were wringing her shirt nervously and she appeared distressed. “Still, let’s not rule out that the defect in the drug could be a mistake on the part of the manufacturers.”

“Could be. But even if that’s true, there’s still an organization that’s in the business of drugging unregistered people and putting them to work or even killing them,” Masaoka said, receiving in reply a glacial stare from his son.

“We checked the logs of the factory and they followed the hiring protocol. Since her Psycho-Pass was clear, they didn’t pay attention to some irregularities, like her birth date. I don’t think we’ll get much more than that since the Ministry of Economy isn’t willing to cooperate,” Ginoza said.

Let’s focus then on the possible routes they’re using to transport the drugs between abolition blocks. Look for reports of hues suddenly clouding and transpose them onto the city map for now,” Kogami ordered.

 -

By force of habit, in stressful days like this one—days in which they could not even say they were stalemate, since no opponent or game had been identified—Kogami and Sasayama ended up having a smoke in the balcony of their floor. The golden city around them shone as the sunset mirrored on the buildings circumambient. It almost seemed like this city could never be dark.

“So, what’s new with you, Ko?” Sasayama asked casually, attempting to have a talk that carried some semblance of levity, after a whole afternoon of grim faces.  

“I was just thinking…” Kogami said, taking a drag while hunching over the glass panel of the balustrade, “it’s evident that they wouldn’t risk moving the drugs on the streets of the city, even if they were using the drug themselves. It’s too unstable and their hues could suddenly cloud. If they know about the side effects, that’s even a bigger reason not to use them.” Sasayama rolled his eyes hearing him speak. “You know, on the night I lost my dominator I met—”

“Oh, you’re still on that? All we’ve achieved so far with these underground crackdowns is stir up the pot for a bunch of maladjusted teenagers and crash their little parties. But we may have found new rave enforcer material, for sure!” He grinned mischievously. “Don’t tell Kunizuka that I said that. She already wants to murder me.”

“And we didn’t find any trace of the drug,” Kogami continued, still engrossed in his thoughts.

“True, but we found lots of alcohol that got confiscated and are probably being consumed by old man Masaoka as we speak, the undefeated champion of the ancient game of ‘elbow-raising,’ if you know what I mean,” he said, half-laughing.

Kogami was finally dragged out of his thoughts.

“Don’t worry, he’ll call when he’s ready to share his loot. He always does anyway.” He snickered, amused.

“Yeah, but you stopped joining us after that night.” He looked at him from the corner of his eye, his wide grin biting the cigarette in his mouth. “The fateful night in the enforcers’ lounge when you got so drunk you were slurring your words and tried to wrestle me because I beat you at Mahjong.”

“Because you cheated,” Kogami replied in a serious tone, exhaling smoke.

“And the arguing with old Masaoka about women, and beauty and death and all that nonsense? You two wouldn’t shut up!” he laughed. “I’d never peg you for the philosophical yet violent type of drunk.”

“You won’t ever let me forget it,” he muttered in a low complain, averting his eyes.

“Don’t worry, you are a karaoke legend now in the enforcers’ lounge. After all, it did take three men to rip the microphone off your paws and even after that, they were terrified that you might bite them!” Sasayama was now bending over the balustrade, laughing shamelessly.

“And you still expect me to come back?” Kogami said, red in the face but it was unclear if from embarrassment or irritation. “Forget it. I’m never drinking again.”

“Don’t blame the alcohol, Ko. Sake is one of those poisons that makes you dance on the line between lucidity and foolishness. It’s your own fault you went down the path of foolishness.”

“Says the person who ended up throwing up in the bathroom,” Kogami sneered.

“Well, when it comes to my vices, I can’t help but be foolish. I’m… what do you call it? A _hedonist_. I live for sake and—“

“Women. Yeah, we’ve heard it all before a thousand times. Half the time getting shitfaced and the other half getting slapped by the women you supposedly revere,” Kogami said, trying to bite back.

“ _Supposedly?_  Okay, now this is personal. One day, _Kogami Shinya_ , you will understand! All your drunk talk about beauty and women is nothing but abstract cynicism that you use to keep people at bay; crap you’ve read in your books,” Sasayama said, and even though both knew he was teasing, there was an unmistakable sting in his words.

“You’re crossing the line, Enforcer.” He put out his cigarette and threw it in the garbage can, walking away.

“Hey! You’re still the most liked Inspector of Division 1!” Sasayama shouted to him as the glass doors closed. Kogami gave him a sarcastic thumbs-up gesture without looking back.

“Shit. I always hit his sore spots without meaning to,” Sasayama mused with a shrug, unconcerned. 

-

Leaning back on the chair of his station, arms on the back of his head and a cigarette in his mouth, Kogami Shinya was absorbedly staring at his computer screen. Everyone had already left and, though he was tired, he knew that if he went home he wouldn’t catch any sleep. A map of the city of Tokyo flashed back at him from the screen.

_Illegal hue-clearing drugs sold to unregistered latent criminals wanting to work. Two cases in different parts of the city seemingly related to the drug. Worked for months… but then their Psycho-Pass clouded. The drugs stopped working. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have loyal consumers than kill them with the product? That sure throws whatever prospects of new customers out of the window. This doesn’t appear to be the classical drug crime confined to the abolition blocks either._

The face of a young woman talking about tunnels appeared in his mind.

_“This is a tunnel that hasn’t been mapped yet.”_

He sat up on his chair.

_It would make sense for the sellers to use the old tunnels to transport the drugs. That woman was familiar with the tunnels and understood those marks on the floor; maybe even made them herself._

He typed some words into his computer and the website for the MLIT blinked in front of him.

_Those old structures stopped being used more than 25 years ago as the city went an infrastructural remodeling under the Toyohisa construction company per commission of the MLIT. According to the company, those tunnels have been perpetually closed or destroyed. No common citizen, even less someone in an abolition block would have access to that information. Unless the old tunnels weren’t destroyed and someone was…mapping them out for criminal use._

The face of the girl was becoming more and more vivid in his mind.

_What was her name? Could she be involved with…?_

He brought his hand to his forehead and closed his eyes to recall what he saw before she kicked his dominator.

_Tsu…Tsugawa… no. Tsubaki? Tsumita? Tsu… Tsu…_

He remembered those incandescent golden-brown eyes, staring at him with anger.

“Tsunemori!” He spat out loud, typing away in his computer.

“Tsunemori. Age 20 to 24. Female. Short. Dark hair.”

He skimmed through various pictures in the citizen database of Sibyl. Quickly scrolling through blonde, brunette, long haired, freckled women until, finally, there was her.

Or at least, someone that looked like her. 

No, it _was_ her. As he remembered: short brown hair and two locks falling along her cheeks framing a pale face. But her countenance was decidedly different; softer, even innocent. The faint trace of a smile still rested on her lips, as if someone had said something amusing seconds before snapping the picture. The sparkle in her brown eyes held something delightful, _hopeful_.

Her doe-eyed look would certainly fool him on a different day, had he not been on the receiving end of her fierceness. Her profile read:

Tsunemori, Akane.  
Age 22  
Graduated from Hongou Higher Education. 2112.  
Currently employed at Fioira Restaurant. Roppongi.

_Wait, this punk works at a restaurant in broad daylight?_

-

Her boot brushed the dusty wooden floor while her body laid suspended in a hammock in a dim shop. A small monkey eating a piece of fruit sat on her stomach as she played with its hair, captivated by the animal—a real one, not a drone pet. In the corners of the room, old artifacts in disuse laid accumulated in random piles that could fall at the slam of a door. The only thing suggesting that this was something akin to a shop, were the two run-down barber chairs with peeling leather cushions and the old mirrors facing them, so old, that you’d think you were looking at yourself as through a thin fog.

“Well, you look much better than the last time I saw you,” Tanaka-san said as he entered his shop, sending a serious glance at the intruder romancing his monkey.

He was a bald old man with a few unruly wisps of white hair hanging from behind his ears; he had the habit of licking his fingers and stroking them to set them down. Dressed in an odd attire—something not uncommon to those living in abolition blocks—he wore sweatpants and sneakers under a dilapidated kimono that had been feasted on by hungry moths.

He unrolled a piece of cloth over a small table and began to organize his tools: the straight razor, the comb, the shave brush, the scissors. He cleaned the relics in the same ceremonial fashion that Akane had seen in those who, anachronistic and useless in Sibyl’s world, strived to preserve a sort of pride in their bygone knowledge.

“Well, I can’t be sad forever, right? Also, Salsa makes me happy,” she answered to his concern, her finger caressing behind the ear of the little monkey who hooted agreeably.

“You should know, that monkey eats better than me nowadays,” the old man said, glaring at the hairy face that stared at him, chewing open-mouthed.

“No worries, Tanaka-San. I also brought something for you.”

She moved her hip to grab the container on her side and the monkey quickly gobbled up what was left of his fruit, hoping to be treated to this banquet too, raising his arms to make a reservation.

“No, Salsa! This is for me!” the old man quickly snatched the container, hiding it from the monkey.

“The best ramen in all of Tokyo!” Akane said eagerly, hoping to reanimate the spirits of the grim old man. She stretched her arm to retrieve the fruit container from a chair and gave another piece to Salsa.

“So, is Ryota coming or what?” the old man said, taking out his metal chopsticks from a drawer and sitting down to eat.

“Yeah, he should be here soon.”

“Good. There’s a group of unregistered people that needs to be moved.”


	3. The Stranger

He meant to go there days before, but the incessant drudgery of reports and action on the field had not granted him a chance. More than a month had passed since the last crackdown and there was still no substantial evidence, beyond the testimony of the factory worker, to continue the investigation. As no new deaths by hue-clearing drugs had been reported, the case had been temporarily relegated under the pile of new, simpler cases. Except, as it was typical in him, he had not forgotten about it.

The restaurant was located in an elegant, vibrant neighborhood. Even now in a late chilly weeknight, small crowds of friends and couples ambled on the street, going in and out of boutiques and cafes, hand in hand, chatting, laughing. Gloved hands shared a pocket, elbows brushed in teasing jests, knowing looks and smiles were exchanged as he numbly trudged past the crowds like a foreigner. When he turned the corner into the street along the park, he savored his relief to find it desolate and calm; even quaint—its sidewalks adorned with holo trees programmed for their leaves to change color in accordance to the season.

Like a creeping ghost, he approached the wide windows of the restaurant to peek inside. It was an ample, well-lit place with high baroque ceilings and refulgent crystal chandeliers. On the cream walls, holographic paintings of various classical still-lifes were projected inside of huge ornate golden frames. It was an expensive place, no doubt. But from what he could see, there were few patrons and only a handful of waitresses amongst which he couldn’t locate her. Perhaps she worked in the back of the restaurant, in the kitchen. Perhaps she didn’t work today. Perhaps she didn’t work here at all.

A despondent huff escaped him as he instinctively went patting his pockets for a pack of Spinels. He tapped the top of the pack, pulled a stick and put it between his lips. A distracted hand brought a lighter to the cigarette, but a figure well beyond the flame, inside the restaurant, caught his eye and stopped his motions. Tsunemori Akane had emerged from double doors in the back, march diligent and confident as a small tray sat on her open palm. She wore a white button-down shirt underneath a fitted burgundy vest and black pants. Yes, the same petite figure but under a different light. The black bowtie around her collar and the shiny silver barrette on her short hair conferred on her a strange, delicate charm.

She approached the table of an old couple that held hands, a bright smile crossing her lips while she set down a dessert for them to share. She seemed to be congratulating them. An anniversary, perhaps? The couple retained her, even as she had finished refilling their cups with tea. They appeared to ask her questions to which she replied almost monosyllabically, mostly nodding, a radiant naked blush on her cheeks. She bowed politely and repeatedly, thanking whatever compliments she was being gifted, holding the tray down with both hands. Kogami smirked mischievously imagining that she was being forced to answer the type of questions women her age were asked; questions about boyfriends and prospects of marriage, with the hidebound paternalism—typical of those born before Sibyl—that viewed being a mere waitress as something equivalent to a tragedy.

 _If only they knew_ , he thought, shaking his head. _Still, for a shameless girl to blush like that._

Another waitress noticed him from inside, raised eyebrows and pointed look inquiring about his entranced staring through the window. Kogami was reminded that his sprawled-bat presence was perfectly visible from inside. Feeling caught—and at the same time logically reassuring himself that he should not feel any shame—he gave her a slight nod and moved away. There was a bench across the street where he sat to wait.

Two hundred pages on his book and five cigarettes later, after the last patrons and some waitresses had left, the lights in the restaurant finally went off. He slid the book inside the pocket of his parka, the cigarette remaining between his lips. Three women came out of the restaurant with her among them, now clad in casual clothes. Akane said goodnight and walked in the opposite direction from the other two. He crossed the street and followed her down the sidewalk, uncaring for the sound of his steps, hands in the pockets of his pants, perceiving her body stiffen as if for a fight and her pace slow down—she had picked up on the pointed presence encroaching on her, as he thought she would—before turning around to face him. Her eyes, however, confessed her surprise at the sight of him.

“I see you remember me.”

“What do you want?” she hissed. Her eyes darted to the other two women down the street, who had turned around to look at them. Akane knew their interest laid not in concern, but in vulgar curiosity. She smiled and waved at them to make them go away.

“Can we talk?”

“Not here.”

And before he could reply, she was already crossing the street to go into the park. He followed her with no rush, taking a drag and looking at her small frame from behind. Her pace was hurried, however, as she went on a dark path, although her demeanor did not indicate anger but, rather, the same stern diligence he had seen in the restaurant. The path led them to a small deserted square with a fountain in the middle. She sat on the nearest bench, on one extreme. He sat on the other.

“The MWPSB is following me now?” She asked, setting her eyes on the fountain instead of him, impatient to work out his motivations to better prepare her defenses.

“The MWPSB has more important things to do. In this case, it’s just me. And I’m not following you.”

“Not following me at this time at night? Lurking in the shadows and waiting for me to get out of work? Come on, even you have to admit that this is a little predatory.” Her mouth was a tight line of cold deference, but there was nuisance in her tone.

“Well, us _Sibyl dogs_ do have to work day and night. I would have sent you a letter and set up an appointment with your secretary, had I known my manner of presentation would displease you. You tell me what channel is best to reach you by. Phone? Text message? Email?”

She rolled her eyes, inevitably.

“I’m sorry I called you a Sibyl dog that time, okay? The circumstances…” She paused for a minute. “Well, you know why. And I know that, in a way, I owe you for—”

“Are you saying you didn’t mean it?”

She glanced at his smug face, serious.

“Oh, no. _I meant it_. But I usually keep that type of comment to myself,” she clarified, dispelling his illusions of dominance.

He snickered in amusement at her frankness. It was clear that the defiance he saw before laid dormant under this pretense at civility. She knew too; that this wasn’t her territory, that she didn’t have any friends to rescue her here—under the all-seeing eye of Sibyl—and that this man, this inspector, was a representative of that which she detested and now he had found her.

“Well, I don’t have a lot of time, so let me get to the point,” Kogami said stoically again, putting out his cigarette on the floor and resting his elbows on his knees.

If she was curious about what he had to say, her face did not betray her concealment of it.  

“I need an information broker.”

Akane’s eyebrows furrowed. “A what?”

“An information broker. Someone who’ll collect information about the fabric of the underground. Hierarchies, ideologies, turfs, traded goods, physical or digital currencies, etcetera. I need to know if anything out of the ordinary catches your eye, any irregularity, any event that seems odd.”

“An infiltrator, you mean.” Akane stared intently at his impassive face.

He stared back, impervious to the judgement on her tone. “Call it what you will. It’s related to a case in which someone lost their life and we need to solve it.”

“Someone? One person? It must’ve been an important person, then, for the MWPSB to go out of its way to seek the aid of a criminal. But what would such a person have to do with the underground?”

“I’ll give you all the pertinent details upon our agreement.”

“No need to be so hasty. I have not agreed to anything.” She angled her body towards him, her hand under her chin, squinting her eyes. “Say, how do you suppose I infiltrate that _fabric_ of which I am a part of, Inspector?”

“I don’t expect to move your inclination on moral grounds alone, or _at all_. You will be compensated, of course,” he said, beginning to grasp the challenge in her words.

“Compensated, you said?” she scoffed, with a half-smile. “I should let you know, my rate is very high. I doubt you could pay it.”

“You don’t say. So your waitressing job is just a recreational pursuit then?” he retorted, stern eyes fixed on hers. “How much are waitresses getting paid these days?”

“Enough that we don’t have to pounce on the first offer made by whatever inspector that comes around flaunting money.”

“Are you so insulted by the idea of getting paid for a service?”

“I’m insulted that you assumed me helpless enough to sell out,” Akane said, attempting to cut through the twists and turns of his words.

“Huh. So I can safely assume that whatever job it is you do in the underground is not rooted on mercenary motives.”

“For a detective, you make your assumptions too fast.”

“I just infer from what I see. And I see a citizen of Sibyl who has an, objectively, humble job in an expensive, exclusive neighborhood but who also happens to collude with criminals of the underground, see? You’re not even trying to deny it, so I—” He saw her shake her head.

“I don’t have to sit here and listen to your half-baked inferences about me.” In a huff, she put the strap of the bag on her shoulder and stood up to leave.

Kogami tsked, impatient.

“Fine, fine. You’re angry. I’m sorry. It wasn’t my inten—“

“Yes. I am angry. If you have the audacity to show up here and ask of me something ridiculous like that, it must be because you have a better inducement than money.” She stared him up and down. “You don’t look like the type of man who likes to waste his time, but your little power scheme of making me guess what that inducement could be is, indeed, very annoying. Have a good night.”

So, this had gone better than expected. Even if she was rough around the edges—the question remained as to why, although it was irrelevant—she was sharp, educated, probably from a decent family, with enough talent to blend with the elites under Sibyl and the riffraff of the underground, all while maintaining a clear Psycho-Pass.

“Your friend, Hinakawa Sho…” Kogami said, finally wielding his trump card.

Akane froze on her tracks as though a thunderclap came with the name of the gone friend, and an irrepressible surge of guilt ran through her. _So that’s it,_ she thought, quickly awakening to the realization that she had lost before they had even started. _Of course._ Biting her lip hard, she attempted to recollect herself before facing him.

“What about him?” she muttered through her teeth.

“He’s been sitting in an isolation cell for a month now. Turns out he’s a latent criminal.” Now that he had revealed his play, his tone lacked the haughtiness from before. His velvety voice even seemed affable.

A gleam of anguish in her brown eyes laid bare that her mind was now elsewhere, thinking of the friend she’d never see again. Kogami realized he’d touch a sensitive fiber in her and that he should thread carefully, lest he would end up getting slapped.

“Now, there’s a chance for him to leave the isolation facility. As you probably know already, your friend is an apt hacker—an excellent one, in fact—and his talents could be of use for the MWPSB. He could…” Kogami sighed and softened his tone, “become an enforcer and have some freedoms that he wouldn’t otherwise.”

“And that’s a life? Being a forced executioner for the MWPSB?” She wasn’t even looking at him anymore; her diatribe was directed at someone else, someone bigger than themselves, someone deaf and blind to justice. “He’s going to give his brains and energy to those who put him in an isolation cell, attacked his weak points, plagued him and tormented him to join them? Will you make him hunt his own friends in order to protect those who scowl at him in contempt too?” Her trembling lips were pale.

“I’m not going to lie to you. It’s not the best life but _it is_ a life. Consider the alternative: a lifetime in isolation, stuck in four walls, monitored by drones, with no one to talk to.” He saw her shiver and pressed on compelling her. “There’s a division at the MWPSB in need of an enforcer. I know the inspector in charge. All it would take is a recommendation from me and he’d be out of the isolation facility in one day. He’d be in good hands.”

She was silent for a moment, waiting for the whirlwind inside her to abate in order to speak properly but words came out, thoughtlessly.

“I should’ve let them kick your ass.”

He considered, and subsequently nodded, in patient understanding.

“Probably. But we’d still be in this same situation.”

She closed her eyes, hating her display of unbridled emotions in front of this man who—she was sure—was collecting and dissecting every one of her moves and words to use against her at some point. She took a deep breath, quickly regaining her poise.

“That which needs to be done is done by those capable, right?” She looked at her feet. “As it stands, I’m incapable of helping you. Please don’t follow me anymore.” She turned to leave.

“Tsunemori-san!”

He ran up to her and pressed a card into the palm of her hand.

“Think it over. Call me or send me a message if you change your mind. This is my personal phone, it’s got nothing to do with the MWPSB.”

She looked at the warm clench of his hand around her wrist. Her gaze then drifted to the paper book peeking out of his pocket.

“Also, and please don’t take it the wrong way, if you are taking any illegal hue-clearing drugs I suggest you stop now. If you know someone who’s taking them, ask them to stop,” he instructed in a tone of genuine urgency.

She put the card in her pocket and hurried past him to put herself out of the awkward feeling and situation.

He saw her disappear in the darkness and went his own way. There were reports to finish.

-

Akane closed the door of the apartment quietly. She set her bag on the floor proceeding to take her shoes off and putting them on the rack along the hallway. Absorbed in thought, studying the new pressing circumstances that confronted her, she didn’t notice the figure reading on the couch as she entered the living room. It was a voice that startled her out of her ruminations.

“There you are.”

“Oh, hi. I didn’t think you’d be awake.”

“Seems like staying up is the only way for me to get a hold of you, Akane.”

“Sorry. I had to close today at the restaurant and—“

“It’s irrelevant. You always have a handy pretext. When are you planning on paying your half of the rent?”

“Didn’t we agree that I’d give you the money on Friday?”

“You said that about last Friday, remember? Not only do I have to put up with your lack of consideration while I’m studying for my aptitude exam, but I must _beg_ _you_ to pay your half?”

“You are right, Mika. I’ll give you the money this Friday. Promise.”

“You said the same thing before. The only reason I allowed you to live here was because of your Psycho-Pass. Had I known you were some type of anomaly I would’ve decided otherwise.”

Akane walked to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She began transferring the food containers from her bag to the bottom rack that corresponded to her.

“I’m not an anomaly, Mika. Sibyl said so,” Akane replied in a soothing tone.

“Everything is a big joke to you, isn’t it? Incredible! You even take food from your workplace with complete impunity but still have the face for rejoinders?” She said, scowling over Akane, arms crossed.

“It wasn’t a rejoinder. I was merely stating a fact.”

“A fact should be evident to the naked eye, no? Doesn’t a fact require congruence?” Mika pulled a portable hue scanner out of her pajamas’ pocket and brazenly scanned Akane, who calmly waited for her to finish.

“Not necessarily. There are many types of illusion,” she said smiling as she headed for her room. “You’ll have your money this Friday.”

Akane entered her room and gently closed the door on Mika’s angry face. The room was dark as usual, except for the red and purple lights from the fluorescent signs outside, penetrating through the blinds in bright stripes of gradating, changing color, projected onto the walls of the spartan room. She made no attempt to turn the lights on; she liked it that way, that and the smooth rumble of the small street outside—of cramped hostess bars, dull laughter and ring of glasses—that had accompanied and even entertained her mind at night, like a corrupted lullaby.

She let her coat drop to the floor and lazily took off her sweater, delaying the completion of her bedtime rituals, lest she would have the time to gauge the new quandary she was in. It was pointless. She let herself fall on the bed and squirmed out of her loose pants, kicking them to the floor. Wearing only a tank top, underwear and socks, she wrapped herself with the blanket, not bothering to go under the sheets. She rolled towards the window, and a stripe of bright red illuminated her harrowed eyes.

“Sho,” she murmured.

“ _He’s sitting in an isolation cell…Monitored by drones, no one to talk to.”_

As a reflex, she pulled the blanket over her face and squeezed her eyes shut, attempting to repel the vivid memories that came gushing back all at once; of days of absolute silence, days in which she would have begged and cried and slammed her fists to hear a human voice.

_Could I keep him from that hell?_

She pushed the blanket away and crawled to the edge of her bed to retrieve her coat from the floor. Rummaging through her pockets, she found the card the man had given her. Her eyes squinted, struggling to make out the characters in the darkness.

“Kogami… Shinya,” she whispered.

_______________________________________________

 

 


	4. Prescription

A nearly mute procession took place in the depths of a tunnel. Feet trod on the damp floor, haltingly, negotiating with the darkness. Still, the group endured--even if gasps of exhaustion were heard every now and then--hoping to not disrupt whatever harmony had brought on the silence. The carriers had told them, _warned them_ , any type of sound you hear means trouble. Means we’ve been found by one of the syndicates. Means it’s over. So they kept quiet while traversing the long stretches of the tunnels that were open to other inhabitants of the underground.

“Hey,” a raspy voice murmured. “How much longer?” He imagined what her carmine pouting lips would look like right now behind the balaclava, envisioning them in the darkness. Ryota sighed, but he had known her far too long to bother being annoyed anymore.

“We’re about to reach the holo entrance.” His voice was low, but not enough that those behind them would not hear. Akane’s careful coaching echoed in his head: be more reassuring, speak to them every now and then, count the clandestine tunnels so they know how far they’ve gone, remind them that you are there, that they can trust you. He’d even tried smiling, until Hitomi told him, in an outburst of laughter, that he looked like a madman.

“Yeah, but how much longer?” she insisted, testing his patience.

He glanced at the blue signs on the tunnel floor Akane had made to guide them. “We are here. Right ahead, to your right. There’s the holo entrance.”

Hitomi adjusted the discs on her infrared glasses and looked up, searching.

“Huh? There’s an entrance, all right. But there’s no holo.”

“What do you mean there’s no holo?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

Grumbling, Ryota turned on his flashlight and spotlighted the top of the tunnel entrance where the display gadget had been placed. It remained there, now only as a desultory artefact. He inspected the dirty floor and found a broken bottle. He picked it up and sniffed it.

“Gasoline.”

“Bastards! That’s the second one they find,” Hitomi murmured. She removed her goggles and looked timidly into the flat darkness of the tunnel, and then at the dust particles floating up in the beam of light, wondering if unwelcome hosts awaited them. “We can’t go back now.”

“We’ll…” Ryota turned around to look at the glaring query in the eyes of those who followed them, “continue in the dark. We should reach our destination in less than two hours. I know you’re tired, but we can’t rest now. We have to forge ahead.” His command was his usual terse, tinted with something like resignation. Deflecting the light from their faces, he gave them a minute to digest the new information.  He stepped first into the now exposed tunnel and beckoned them to follow. The unregistered did, and the light inside the tunnel vanished again.

            _

Hurried steps rang in the silvered hallways of the MWPSB, so charged with intent as to cause those working overnight to look up from their reports. Kogami Shinya wore a rare scowl; a scowl that—he’d been told by Sasayama—rendered him an unsettling menace.

“Wait up, Kogami!” Inspector Ginoza grunted, adjusting his glasses in irritation each time the thunderous dash of his colleague turned another corner.

“At what time did it happen?”

“Wait until we get there, at least,” Ginoza muttered.  

“Are the enforcers there?”

“Yes, I summoned them before you got here.”

The doors of the analysis lab opened to receive them. Masaoka stood next to the sofa, a metallic hand concealing a yawn while the other held a coffee cup. Yayoi sat quiet and unperturbed, smoothing the creases on her black pants, waiting. On the other end of the sofa, Sasayama sat asleep, mouth agape. Ginoza angrily thumped his foot against the sofa, waking him up **.**

“So, what do we have?” Kogami asked impatiently.

Shion acknowledged the inspectors with a turn of her swivel chair, perpetual cigarette between her lips, before her lacquered nails went back to the keyboard. A surveillance video of the factory worker in her detainment cell blinked onto the main screen.

“At 4:00 am our guest was still resting placidly in her room. At 4:30, however…” Shion fast-forwards the video, “she begins tumbling about on her bed and is abruptly woken up.”

“Woken up?” Masaoka wondered at the choice of words.

Shion halted her narration to let the grotesque event unfolding on the screen explain itself: a slight trembling of the limbs—to the woman’s own disbelief and shock—grew quickly into full body jerks. But unlike the involuntary spasmodic nature of a seizure, the movements were her own, as if trying to placate something attacking from the inside, slowly grasping, anticipating, the blinding pain.  She fell off the bed and frantically kicked her feet against the floor, mouth agape in shock and agony. Her nails went to the skin of her face and neck, scraping it off in desperation and helplessness. The sound was muted, but the imagined screams seemed to pierce as loud as if they had been in that room with her.

The screen went blank.

“You get the idea.” Shion’s voice was sober. “It was a very painful death.”

“Was it the same as—” Yayoi began to ask, pragmatically.

“The same. The bloated limbs and open sores correspond to the lacerations seen in the first subject. We can certainly assume he went through the same agony.”

“We shouldn’t speculate that it’s the drug causing this. Not a trace was found in the first subject; the crackdowns have delved nothing. Can a drug even remain in a body for this long? All we know about this so-called drug came from…” Ginoza circled his hand in the air, “the witness. Her.”

“A witness who just happened to have a very unnatural death under the custody of the bureau,” Sasayama reminded him. Rarely did his voice carry such forbidding tone.

“Sasayama is right. Even if we haven’t determined the illness, its symptoms are evident,” Masaoka suddenly looked very weary. “We have no reason to assume she was lying.”  

“There’s more,” Shion continued. “Although her remains are being analyzed for any toxic traces as we speak, it’s been determined that the cause of death was cardiac arrest. If such a drug exists, it appears to be something that exponentially exacerbates the production of adrenaline, generating a state of euphoria while subjecting the body to an unbearable pain.”

There was a brief moment of deliberating silence.

“The drug is still active, even after it stopped being effective against hue-clouding,” Kogami spoke, his voice tense, low and angry. “The purpose wasn’t to recreationally drug them; hell, it wasn’t even to clear their hue. The purpose was for someone to witness this. For us to see this.”  

“Kogami,” Ginoza hissed, in hopes of deterring his friend's thinking. “This is not the time to rely on mere speculation."

“So are they going to make the case public now?” Sasayama asked the two inspectors.

Ginoza glanced at Kogami, who averted his eyes.

“The higher-ups don’t want to make it public yet. We don’t want to cause a hike on the stress level if we don’t even know what we are looking for or how to stop it.” Ginoza made sure his voice was firm, already anticipating a refusal. “I’m sure you understand the consequences if this news got out.”

Sasayama turned to Kogami.

“So we are just going to wait until more people die like this? I know that they are _undesirable_ scum by Sibyl’s standards, but even—”

“We don’t have that jurisdiction, Sasayama. I doubt this new incident will compel them to change their mind.” Kogami gave him a look that carried something knowing, something reassuring. “I’m sure they have good motives to do so. Yayoi?”

“Yes, Inspector. A high-priority request has been sent to the administrative wing of the Ministry of Economy for a randomized but thorough review of employees’ credentials at different factories. So far no inconsistencies have been reported by the ministry.”

“Fine. Take a break. We’ll see you in a couple hours back at your posts,” Ginoza said with a wave of the hand, ending the impromptu meeting.

En route back to their office, the gait of both inspectors evinced a sense of impotence not felt since their rookie days in the bureau. Sure, there were patterns that could be followed in an investigation—crime could be tediously unoriginal. Methods were plagiarized or concocted from many others, copycats abounded, and madness, passions and hates engulfing the human heart could be explained away with dull cliches. By its own design and execution, Sibyl already stopped most deviant tendencies in their outset. But Kogami had the unshakeable feeling that this was something more; a message, a warning. Because crime could also be that. A ferrous will inflicted upon others at any cost, through cryptic brilliance or impregnable, almost superhuman strength. Because _humans_ could also be that. Wasn’t that the reason there were detectives at all? Their job was to learn to decipher the hidden message. A chess game inside a labyrinth, Saiga would say. It felt like that.

The sound of a beep snapped him out of his musings. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” Kogami told the equally pensive Ginoza. “My mother.” He waved the phone in his hand, watching the skeptical man turn away from him.

It was a text message from an unknown and, he knew, temporary number. _“Fine. I’ll do it.”_

A second beep followed. _“I’m Tsunemori Akane, by the way.”_

Labyrinths held demons and monsters, he thought, but why would anyone enter them at all, if not for a brush with something divine; a goddess who walked in the penumbra, unraveling a ball of red thread to lead them to justice?

 


	5. Osmosis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was edited because there were sentences I did not like.

“I thought this was a good place to talk. There’s no one here.”

Both figures stood on the steps of the abandoned dock overlooking the city. Behind them, massive harbor cranes rose like sabres, uselessly waiting on guard, corroded by rust since the time Japan had ended trading with other countries. In hindsight, the place seemed appropriate, but now the stubborn night wind frolicked with her short hair, fluttered the stripe of dress that peeked from underneath. With a shudder, Akane hugged the flaps of her coat closed, wondering if the cold was solely to be blamed for the jittery sensation in her limbs.

“And no cymatic scanners either,” Kogami remarked calmly with a cigarette in his mouth. From the corner of her eye, she could just see the unfolding curl of smoke. “Your friends could be hiding somewhere around here. Just waiting for the right moment to give me that beating you said I deserved.”

She let out a small huffed laugh, despite his serious tone.

“It’s freezing,” he continued. “Next time let’s meet at an automated restaurant, okay?”

“Is that your version of a neutral place?” Akane asked, venturing an upward glance towards him. The far-away city glow outlined the sharp angles of his face and filtered through the tips of his unruly hair. _He doesn’t even look bothered by the cold._ When he did not say anything, but instead turned to look down at her, veiling her with his shadow, she appraised at once—never really finding the time or mind before—the full dimension of his bulk and stature, the pull of his presence. “Either way,” she took a prudent step back, “there’s no need for tiresome routines now, Inspector. You already have my cooperation, _remember?_ ” Her eyes rose to meet his as her voice steeled. “I have some conditions, however.”

“Direct,” Kogami simply said, seemingly unburdened by remorse or suspense. “I expected as much. Well, let’s hear’em.”

It was unsettling, this casual openness. And as much as she had prepared for a declared line as to where they stood as unwilling collaborators, something inside her could not help but wonder how much he truly needed her, if perhaps there existed an obscure leverage to her advantage.

“I…” She sniffled in the cold. “I want to know that Hinakawa’s out of the isolation facility. I don’t know anything about how enforcers live either and—”

“He’s been out since we last spoke. Seems to be doing well with Inspector Aoyanagi.” He frowned, thinking. “A little too quiet and awkward for her, but efficient for sure. Sibyl was right on choosing him.”

Her face betrayed her initial shock and worse yet, the subsequent skepticism. She searched into his eyes for the trace of a lie. He leveled with her like he understood what she needed from him. A word. An assurance.

“I’ll get you a letter.” He paused, seemed to deliberate. “Once. Enforcers may only be contacted by blood relatives and I’m already breaking enough rules as it is.”

“Fine. But why did you do it?”

“I figured you’d come round, Tsunemori.” The scent of his cigarette reached her nose. “Once you stopped cursing my name.”

A flush of warmth rushed to her cheeks, the bite of the cold inadvertently mitigated. She resisted the compulsion to hide or turn her face away, wearing her glow proudly, almost angrily. _No, I’m not the one to be shamed._

“And how could you be so sure?

“I wasn’t. I thought it was likely you’d contact me.” His voice had begun to trail off, but the light of suspicion in her eyes commanded him to continue. “For some reason you feel responsible for Hinakawa Sho. You two have a strong bond. You stayed behind to help him, if I recall correctly. You probably even thought of other ways to save him, a plan to sidestep the system instead of having to negotiate with it. But even you have to admit that Sibyl is impenetrable, so it was this or never knowing what happened to him. Or rather, I thought that if you ever contacted me, those would be the reasons.”

Her cold hands tightened their grasp on her coat at the recital of her self-professed shortcomings, transparent even to the stranger before her.

“You are correct,” she conceded, looking down and away. “This was the least I could do for him.”

“Did you force him there? In the underground?”

She shot him an indignant look. “What? Of course not! What do you think I—”

“What are you blaming yourself for? Is he a child?”

“You—” She found herself groping. “You don’t understand. You don’t know him. He—”

“It was a matter of time, Tsunemori. Sooner or later a cymatic scan would’ve flagged him. If he thought you’d hide him forever, his fault was being naive. But if _you_ are blaming yourself for _his_ choices, wallowing in it, I’d be forced to say you’re being pointlessly masochistic.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and then added: “Think that at the very least now you’re doing something about it.”

Her lips parted as if stung to explain herself better, but the words refused to leave her throat. She took a resigned deep breath instead. The cold air in her chest burned but soothed at the same time.

“Even if you are right, Inspector,” her soft words came crisp in her condensed breath, “there’s a lot you, the elites, everyone, don’t know. As for the matter of my guilt, or my so-called masochistic tendencies, wouldn’t you be the first one to admit that they’ve been gainful in your getting me here?”

She saw him smile a strange smile, a  _proud_ smile, before he exhaled a last sigh of smoke and flicked his cigarette to the floor.

“And here I stupidly thought I was offering some comfort. Fine. Let’s not waste more time then.” He pressed a button on his terminal to display a map of Tokyo. “See the two dots here? These are abolition blocks in which an illegal hue-clearing drug appeared.”

She leaned in closer to glean the coordinates from the map on his wrist, but caught herself when she felt him grow stiff.

“Yes," Akane said a little flustered, "the drug you mentioned last time. There’s many types of illegal drugs in the abolition blocks. What’s so special about this one? Didn’t it work?” 

“Did it clear their hue? Yes. Did it work? Depends on what the drug was made for.”

“What do you mean?”

“The drug can temporarily clear the hue of a latent criminal, but once their crime coefficient rises again, the user dies. I’m— _we’re_ treating these cases as murders. Our main objective is to intercept the route the distributors used to move the drug between blocks. It’s likely they’d use the tunnels, which is where I thought you could help me. Have you heard anything about it? Any bit of information could be useful.”

“People whose hue is clouding… Sure. They can find illegal drugs that are highly effective, but,” an expression of focused thought came to her face, wide brown eyes scintillating beneath furrowed eyebrows, “something that can reverse the status of a latent criminal? That’s unheard of, even there. Drugs that potent aren’t exactly affordable either. Was it commissioned by a politician or…?”

“Both victims were from the abolition blocks.” The headshot of a gaunt woman with deep creases on an ashy face blinked on the screen. “Unregistered. Latent criminals.”

Akane felt a weight drop in her stomach. “Unregistered?” she echoed in a strangled voice. Her eyes shot to roam over the picture of the woman in minute detail, her thoughts rushing and flipping through faces and voices in the dark. Dim light tracing features. Fearful features. No, she’d never met her, she was sure. Knowing that did not shake the uneasiness a single inch. _It’s them. It has to be them. Who else would...?_

Kogami hunched over to better read something in her face. “Yes, why? Do you know anything?”

His sudden closeness jolted her, but this time he did not move away. Weighing the ramifications of an open exchange, she coldly tried to determine if this was nothing else but a gigantic mistake. Gray eyes waited patiently for her. _It’s true we’ve been closer before, in anger and aversion too_ , she thought. She chose to trust him once more.

“Those abolition blocks, 14 and 25, are within the territory of the Arumajiro syndicate. They control that area of the underground, including the ports from Minato to Chiba. A defunct tunnel that runs along the coast and veers into the city connects both blocks.” She glanced towards the city, to the overhanging haze it emitted as if it were a living beast. “From what I’ve been told, the syndicates formed long ago, when the crime coefficient system was put in place and people went rushing into abandoned blocks. The Arumajiro are the biggest one, controlling every aspect of the underground in their territory; what’s sold there, who moves through there. Who lives and who doesn’t. If that drug appeared in their territory, it's likely they would know about it.”

“Huh. So the syndicates are real,” Kogami said in a deep, musing voice. “I’ve heard something about it, but our intel is limited to a few antisocial cells. Nothing organized beyond ideological ranting. I really thought they were mere conspiracy since our radar never picked them up.”

“Because Sibyl only tracks those citizens it deems valuable for this society,” Akane clarified. “It doesn’t care about crime or justice in the abolition blocks, so those that live and die there had to devise their ways of obedience and survival. You see, people need an order—even a semblance of it is preferable to chaos—and the syndicates delivered on that front. Humans can’t survive in such precarious conditions before a struggle for power arises, and that conflict is typically resolved by might, not  by consensus or will.” Her bright eyes were set now on something well beyond the city. “Rather than creating an alternative to the Sibyl system, people discarded that possibility out of fear, ultimately legitimizing the very system that had ostracized them. But when people renounce the agony of that struggle, we forget that justice can’t ever come from fear. All we do is move on from master to master.”

He stood quite still while listening. His face was that of a statue carved into deep contemplation—or grave concern—all bereft of a mocking grin.

“Thinking like that will cloud your hue,” was what he chose to answer, perfunctorily, as if reciting from a Sibyl sanctioned manual. The same automatic response she had begun to hear two years ago, and each time gradually less and less until it became a dim sizzling sound in the back of her head, the quieter and lonelier she grew. She smiled wistfully, resolved that it was silly to have anticipated something else. _And from an inspector._ A little peeved to find the condescension in the old words did not pain her any less now than they did back then.

“Even if it’s true that the system isn’t perfect,” he said in a low voice, “I’ve come to realize that a perfect society is achieved by giving up a perfect society.”

“I see it hasn’t clouded yours,” Akane remarked, good-naturedly. “But doesn’t that sound less like an achievement and more like capitulation? Have you so little faith in humans, Kogami-san?”

“When we arrest a monster, when we protect a victim, I confirm that my duty as an inspector is needed, that there’ll always be someone or _something_ to protect. But,” he looked down at his upturned palm, slowly clenching it into a tight fist, “even in this world one can’t be a stranger to the darkness in humans. Some can ignore it, go about life and pretend it doesn’t exist. But they can only do so because there’s someone fulfilling their duty in the best way they can.”

He had spoken with such bold honesty that Akane could only stare at him with something akin to amazement.

“But if you really must know,” he went on, turning his eyes upon her, her own eyes widening at the simmering intensity of the man, “my hope—my faith, if you must call it that—lies in thinking that in time the system will reach those who need it the most, even those in the abolition blocks. Just like I hope that your friend Sho and other enforcers will eventually rehabilitate.”

A warning like the toll of a bell rung in her head. And even as she reminded herself to be careful, she knew he was not groveling for her sake. It was a certainty sensed with the body rather than known with the mind, which only made it the more disquieting.  _These are his principles, and he hangs to them like a dangling man may grasp onto the ledge that’d save him from the darkness underneath. But, aren’t we all holding onto something like that? The happy conformity of a clear hue out here; the fueling rage in the underground. And those two ends will not ever meet, because, how many would Sibyl spare that it isn’t sparing now? How many would rehabilitate after all they’ve lived there?_

“If that’s how you think,” Akane said, her voice humble and low, “then I sincerely hope your faith is well-placed.”

“It is. You’ll see,” he assured her. “Tell me, how hard is it to come in contact with someone from the syndicates?”

A renewed shiver ran through her thin body. A sensation whose origin she could easily locate. “It’s not easy but I think it can be done.”

“Then you and I will work together to make that happen.”

With a nod, Akane acknowledged the agreement but couldn’t bring herself to share his enthusiasm. The eager aura that his body exuded was borne in on her; it was that of someone readying for a sought-out fight. There was something decidedly savage about it. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth. “Do you think more people will die like that?”

“Not if we get to them first.”

“Y—you understand that the information I gave you… it puts me in a dangerous position, don’t you?”

“I do, and I will do my best to protect you.”

“You? Or Sibyl?” asked Akane, quickly.  

He looked at her like she had turned his attention towards a question never truly pondered before, one that demanded a formerly unfathomable bifurcation between duty and character. " _I_ will, of course.”

There came a moment of silence that both let extend. Akane recalled the timetables for the trains at night as a passing thought but refrained from looking at her watch to check the time.

“I’ve got to ask...”

She had been waiting for this. “You’re going to ask about the maps, aren’t you?”

“You know the syndicate routes and you’ve memorized the maps, yes.”

Akane lowered her chin towards her chest, sinking her face into the collar of her coat. “Are you investigating me too?”

“Of course not.”

“I’ll get you to the syndicates, Inspector. I’ve not committed any crime—my hue shows that—and, correspondingly, I shouldn’t affect yours, if that’s your fear,” she explained logically, in a bargain to present mutual gains. “As long as Sibyl doesn’t deem me a criminal, I don’t see why you should.”

“It’s _not_ that I think you’re a criminal.”

He appeared so insulted, each word so emphatically enunciated as to avoid being misunderstood, that Akane couldn’t hold back a laugh.

“You change your narrative too quickly,” she said mirthfully, which only seemed to make him uncomfortable.

“I guess I was only curious,” he muttered.

“Very well. Then let’s just say I have a speleological interest on what lies under this city,  just like _you_ have an archeological interest in artifacts from forgone pasts.”

“I do?” he asked, his scowl superceded by a perplexed smile.

Briefly emerging from inside the collar, her chin pointed towards the book sticking out of his pocket. “Not a lot of people read paper books anymore. Not even in the underground.” She looked at the cracked edge of the vintage cover. “I see you’ve already finished the book from last time.”

“Oh.” He slightly rose his arm to examine himself. “It’s an inherited habit, I suppose. I have a few books lying around.”

She smiled from within her coat, only the crescents of her eyes visible. “Yes, because people have old paper books lying around nowadays,” she teased in a voice rasped by the cold.

He did not answer in words, nor did he smile, but stared straight into her as if she were an odd creature. Akane swallowed, her no-longer smiling eyes caught, and secretly wished she would completely disappear into her coat.

“Just get me to the syndicates and I’ll be out of your hair,” he promised, in a direct but not unkind voice that bargained to present mutual gains, before he angled his body and eyes towards the city again.

As if by osmosis, her body mirrored his movement, but her eyes could not help but stay on him for a little bit longer.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is dedicated to my sweet friends Ace_Capades and Cleverwolfpoetry.


	6. Heart of Iron

Tanaka-san would have her be blindfolded for hours at first. “Visualize the tunnel. Do you hear the drops of water?” he’d ask. “Do you hear the echo? Feel their pulse reach you, tap, tap. It’s coming for you. Which way are you going to go, Akane?” Her mind would be then set off, like a furious dog, chasing for the source of the sound through the labyrinthine underground city, wildly, for it was not darkness that she feared, but silence.

Now, crouching in the depths of a pitch-black tunnel, the darkness around her felt material and thick, and she felt submerged in it. The words echoing in her head, vivid as if they had just been uttered; the soft spoken suggestions hanging like whispers somewhere there. And her ear tuned to the sound of the void, awaiting the faint rumble of a syndicate car to disrupt it. It was the body churning next to her that startled her first.

“Can’t tell if you’re focused or detached,” Ryota murmured in reproach. They huddled closely for warmth, leaning against the curved walls of the clandestine tunnel, waiting. “You are well aware of all that could go wrong here, no?”

Akane stifled a sigh of avowal and turned her head on the direction of the voice. “I’m sorry to get you involved.”

“It’s not too late to walk away.”

“No,” she replied in a quiet voice. “I gave my word.”

“To an inspector. Did that bastard know what he was putting you up against?”

“You know things were leading up to this anyway.” Akane’s voice did not alter from her usual calm. “And no, he doesn’t know. He wouldn’t have agreed otherwise. All he knows is that I’ll bring someone from the syndicate to where the MWPSB can arrest them.”

“He thought you’d ask nicely and the syndicate would simply comply.” He made a point of scoffing with all the disdain he could muster. “So that’s the type that’s blessed by that system, huh? The elite? I swear, I’ll relish the day their whole world comes crumbling down.” He paused and waited for a sound of assent from her, but Akane gave him none. “This is not a decision to make on your own! You do realize that all our hard work was done to avert the Arumajiro, don’t you? But tonight you go hunting for them.”

“It’s not like that,” Akane softly countered, blowing air into her cold hands. “I’m doing this for Sho too. He’s been out of the isolation facility even before I agreed to this.”

“That what your Inspector told you?”

 _And you believed him_ , was the implication.

“The syndicates are closing in on us,” Akane bluntly reminded him, straightening herself as if she had been pricked. “We still don’t know how they are locating our holos, but if this keeps up we’ll end up with no routes. We can’t sit around waiting for them to come for us. And it’s not like Sho’s around to create holos for us anymore, is it? So yes, if I have to use the MWPSB against our enemy, to deter them, then I will.”

“Are you sure it’s not you who’s getting used?” he hissed close to her ear. “Think about it. Cause an underground war. Have all the scum eliminate each other. It’s not a bad plan. Except _you_ get to walk out of here.”

“You really think I’d—"

Ryota gave a resigned chuckle. “You know I rarely question your methods, Akane. Even when others have objected. People I’ve known and trusted longer than you.”

“You mean Taro,” Her voice dropped very low, “and Tanaka-san.”

“Tanaka-san would call this a betrayal. You know _this_ is—”

“Listen,” Akane willed herself to tame the defensive strike in her voice, “the inspector doesn’t know anything about us. It was conditional upon our agreement. I would not dream of putting any of you at risk if I can help it. And he’s not after us, anyway. He’s after that drug.”

“But he _is_ after us. If he wasn’t, how come your friend got arrested?”

Her eyes widened in the dark and her fingers groped at the baseball bat on the tunnel floor. She sprinted to her feet. “Quiet!” she hissed. “They’re here.”

\-                                                                                         

Kogami mutely stared at the screen of Kunizuka’s portable computer. On the digital map a red dot blinked in situ. It was a surgical mission, he knew. Intersect, stall, detain. And yet, against all practical knowledge, he had amended the drone deployment with Shion twice, tested Tsunemori’s tracker repeatedly, recapped all delegated duties—to the group and individually—and fidgeted with his own terminal, all more than once, beneath Ginoza’s skeptical and bemused gaze.

“This is absurd,” Ginoza said, knowing better than to outright lash out, especially when it seemed like some of Sasayama’s selective deafness had somehow rubbed on his friend. “Are you sure we can trust this person?”

Kogami gave him a plain look. “I’m sure, Gino. Relax.”

“Relax? Do you have any idea what that could do to your hue?” Ginoza’s spectacled glare flitted to Masaoka and back to Kogami. “Contacting someone from the abolition blocks? Are you out of your mind? Where the hell did you even get that idea?”

“I told you. The broker is not from the abolition blocks,” Kogami replied, moving to inspect a coil of wires.  

“Gino-sensei, the broker is a raver like our own Kunizuka over here.” Sasayama placed an arm around Yayoi’s shoulders and squeezed her tight against his side. “Perhaps an old friend of hers, huh?”

“I will break your arm, Sasayama, I swear.” Yayoi’s voice did not rise a decibel, but her icy glare was more effective in repelling the man than a dozen shouts.

“You see? If this dangerous beauty hasn’t managed to cloud any of you two, I don’t see how some random broker possibly could,” Sasayama said laughing, making sure to move his arm away.  

“Sasayama,” Masaoka called, dragging the syllables of the enforcer’s name. “If someone here could claim the doubtful talent of increasing people’s crime coefficients, that’d probably be you. Let the inspectors do their job, kid.”

“Is that so? Well, that attests to the strong Psycho-Pass of our owners here, don’t it, old man?” Sasayama gave Ginoza a hard smack on the side.

“You’re one to talk,” Ginoza grumbled to himself while he rubbed his arm where Sasayama had hit him.

But any surrounding commotion was ignored by Kogami, who roamed anxiously around the cellar. About all he could evoke in his head was the young woman sitting alone in that tunnel, ready to singlehandedly face a make of predator unknown to him. He wished, regretfully, to better counter her insistence to walk into the tunnels on her own. _“I know them better than you do. It’s an easy transaction, Kogami-san,”_ she had said, with that voice and that face equally soothing and amazed—almost ridiculing of his concern. It was like they both pretended she could fool him, even when her quivering pupils told him otherwise.

And he still let her go.  

“Inspector! It’s moving!” Yayoi called out, closing-up on the map. The blinking dot advanced towards the intersection of the tunnels, brisk and steadfast—it was _her_ , it was that head-on walk of hers _._ Kogami gave a careful downward glance at his terminal. _Come on. Just press the button._ But the call was taking too long to come, and when the dot completely disappeared from the screen, an imagined danger transmogrified into something real and sharp, like the point of a knife.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” Kogami demanded.  

“I’m—I’m not sure.” Yayoi was as flustered as him, her fingers working deftly over the keyboard. “We must’ve lost reception with the tracker. Something must be blocking the signal.”

Kogami called the tracking device he had given Akane. No response, no signal. No time to lose. “Gino, you and Masaoka go towards the Takeshiba exit. Sasayama and I will go in towards the old metro entrance. Kunizuka, triangulate the area from here.”

“Won’t you need backup if they took the bait, Ko?” Masaoka asked, starting on his feet already.  

“If they did, you’ll know soon enough. Hurry!”  

-

The truck ran fast, headlights guiding the way forward. In the make-do style of the abolition blocks, the truck was a rudimentary product, assembled in part with scraps collected from the long abandoned industrial district of Ougishima. The only thing that suggested any vehicular aspiration was the miraculously intact windshield, a rusty bonnet and its full, lurid lights. There were no doors, bumpers or guards, as these were not needed for the mundane task of transporting goods between abolition blocks. Isolated on the surface, to the eyes of Sibyl, the abolition blocks were linked in a subterranean network yet to be fully uncovered. The tires rolled on smoothly on the cracked tunnel floor, and they would have done for a quiet ride, had it not been for the hoots of laughter from the three men sitting in the front. In the truck bed the cargo travelled: beaten, bound and gagged.

It was the skinny man who saw the boy in the distance first.

“What the—?” He rubbed his eyes with the dirty sleeve of his jacket, doubting his perception to the effects of alcohol. A boy still stood there, in the middle of nowhere, like an apparition.  

The others saw, figured the boy saw them too. Their glaring lights were already upon his lithe frame. But the boy did not flinch, did not move a hand to shade his eyes, did not intend to get out of the way.

“A ghost,” the man at the wheel gasped, shuddering despite himself, his face pale as paper. People had watched them in silent terror or morbid curiosity each time their boots crushed a head or their hands slit a throat, but once he’d heard the whispered curses coming from the mottled crowds like a witch’s chant, he couldn’t rid his mind of them. And damned as he knew he was, he surely did not feel ready for divine retribution just yet. He pressed an unsure foot on the brake pedal and the car slightly jerked. A hard clench on his shoulder warned him against stopping.

“Don’t tell me you believe that folk-tale crap,” the bigger man grunted through a locked jaw. He rose from his seat and leaned his massive chest against the windshield—his solid-muscled arms dangling over, the grasp on the bottle in his hand tight. A swarm of vibrant tattoos ran up his hands and arms all the way to his shoulder, where the bright-red plates of an armadillo emerged from under his ripped shirt sleeve and disappeared into his back. He waited warily, and even the prisoners in the back seemed to have traded their pants of fear for a withheld, attentive breath. A wide grin crossed his face, as distance and light allowed a better discernment of the ghost.

“It’s only a girl, you gullible idiot,” he observed disgruntledly, half-tempted to hurl his bottle forward and see if her head would bleed, if only to make the point.

“An unregistered bitch left behind by her group of travelers,” the skinny man said.

“No, no. She’d be running. She’d know better than to just stand there.” The big man squinted his eyes. “‘Sides, she don’t look the type.” He tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Slow down.”

The driver stopped the truck a prudent meters from the girl, to where they could see the blink of her wide eyes. Standing casually with her hands behind her, she might as well have been admiring the firmament or taking a stroll prior to their coming. Except, there was that look on her face. A look they were not accustomed to: a flippant, insolent defiance to it.

“You aren’t from the blocks,” the big man spoke first, studying her from the feet up. In his tone was the strange satisfaction of those who welcome a foreigner into hell. “You aren’t lost. You aren’t scared either.”

“I’m not afraid, no,” replied a young, _soft_ voice, and the men chuckled at her little interjection. “And one day people will tire of being afraid too. When they do, the last _shall_ be the first.”

Their grins slowly dropped, and the prisoners behind them stirred in their tethers. The bigger man registered their movement, but kept the angry girl on his sightline. The glint of a metal bar fell towards the truck bed and a muffled cry was heard. The girl flinched like she had taken the blow herself.

“A carrier?” he said, smiling now to see the shocked rage on her face. “So we underestimated the old bastard, huh? His bullshit seems to have garnered appeal with the higher sensibilities of Sibylines!” His eyes moved stealthily to scan the tunnel walls. “What? Is life under Sibyl so boring you’d rather die where only rats will find your bones? No system to protect you here, you know.”

“Sibyl can’t protect me any more than it can you,” she answered through clenched teeth.

“A dissident. How many of you get rejected by the same system that you used to kneel to? Came here to teach us animals how to live? Or perhaps he sent you to bargain?” He noticed the slightest frown on her face. “You look confused. Did he not tell you what happened to his last emissary? In the end, we could not reach an agreement…my knife and his face.” The other men snorted out in laughter.

“I’m not here to make entreaties to your conscience, if you had any,” she said sharply. “I came to stop you.”

They saw her enlarged shadow charge against them, and by then the bigger man was already leaping over the windshield, looming over her like a hawk. He did not see how or when she had produced a bat, but the shattering sound of glass awoke him to her real purpose. He landed heavy on the bonnet and flung an arm to grab her before she could reach the second headlight, but the bat allowed her an advantageous distance. She swiftly whirled and crouched with arms extended, deflecting his grasp by a mere inch, when he saw the bat arc through the air like a sword, catching the last of light before everything went completely dark.

He should have fallen over where she was crouching, he should have felt her move or shoulder past him, but he could not. So he swung his arms around in blindness and fiery rage, screaming curses and promises of pain. Imprecations echoed by the men in the car, now scuffling and grappling in the gloom against the prisoners who squirmed and kicked their way out of the truck bed. He heard the sound of soles against dust, the feet of the unregistered pelting off in the direction they had brought them from, seizing the unique chance granted by the girl. His men felt their way back to the car, guiding each other with their voices.

There was a low sound of rushing behind him, the scuffing of boots. He swiftly whipped around to look. He saw the feeble flicker of a holo as she ran through it, the outline of her figure sharply defined for one second before disappearing.

“Get back in the car,” he shouted at the other men. “Find a flashlight. Now!”

Blinded, he strode on the direction of the holo and reached out. Ripples of light emerged from his hand, extending outwardly to the edges of a huge clandestine tunnel entry, as though a lake radiating moonglow lay vertically there. When he drew his hand back, his eyes were drawn towards the floor, to a blue neon line demarcating the entry. He stared at the mark quizzically as if it would usher an answer, when the realization suddenly hit him. “Lemonade Candy _,”_ he murmured in incredulous excitement. 

He turned to the men and the spotlight of a flashlight quivered close to his face.

“What do you want to do?” the skinny man asked.

“There’s a holo here. We go after her.”


End file.
